


Between a Quantum Rock and a Hard Place

by CaffieneKitty



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Supernatural
Genre: CURRENTLY A STALLED WIP, Crack, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Gen, Geographical Inaccuracies, Historical Inaccuracy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Season/Series 02 Supernatural, Season/Series 03 Doctor Who, Time Travel, Western, monster lore liberally interpreted for dubious comedic effect, references to other fandoms - Freeform, wibbly wobbly timey wimey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2007-09-20
Updated: 2008-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffieneKitty/pseuds/CaffieneKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two worlds are colliding and the future of both universes depends on the Winchester boys, stranded in a time not their own, and a strange little man and his relatively normal friend in a strange little blue box.<br/> </p><p>  <i>NOTE: This story is currently a stalled WIP. I have many notes and scenes for continuation all the way through to the end and I do intend to finish it, but I don't know when.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've taken liberties with certain after-effects of a monster's attack strictly for some cheap comedy, and also taken mild liberties with American climatology. I'll be taking _many_ more liberties later, trust me. Originally started for the spn_crackfic challenge "Out of Time". And, yeah, it's a crossover... So I'm mangling more than just the Supernatural universe with this...
> 
> Fair warning, everything I know about the time period involved I learned from the internet, Wikipedia and RPGs, so people who actually do know American history, please put on your cringing hats now.
> 
>  
> 
> _Originally started posting on Livejournal September 20, 2007_

Sam closed his left eye. Opened it. Closed his right eye. Opened it. "I'll be damned," he muttered to the stone angel statue three feet away. "This book was right." Closed his left eye. Opened it. Closed his right eye. Opened it. Damn, blinking one eye at a time needed a hell of a lot of focus and attention.

"Dean! Found a mirror yet?" he called again, closing the book on the loose paper and shuffling backward a step, eyes on the statue.

Something indistinguishable and possibly profane echoed from a far part of the building.

Sam's backward-questing foot knocked over a stack of old newspapers. Mold spores flew everywhere. The bar-trivia factoid that it is nearly impossible to sneeze with your eyes open flashed through Sam's mind before-

"Oh, cra- a- AH CHOOO!"

He felt the grip of the angel's cold hands, and then the world dropped out from under him.

-

"What do you mean, they only move when no one's looking?" Dean had said over a week ago.

"Exactly that, Dean. When you aren't looking at the statues, they move, really fast. If you even _blink_ they can get you. That's what it says in this book anyway. Bobby's not sure where he got it." Sam turned the leather-bound journal over in his hands, flipped to the page where _Journal of Impossible Things_ was scrawled. "Says he's had it for years."

"Statues that move, but only when someone's not looking at them? And that's why people are disappearing without any trace of blood or remains left behind?"

"We've seen weirder."

"...true. What about cameras? Would a camera work? Or a mirror?"

"Camera, no, it has to be something living. Mirror... maybe. We can try it."

Dean shrugged. "Yeah, sure we can hang around the creepy old house all night playing hide and seek with the statue, or we can just take 'im out." He grinned and pulled a grenade out of the weapons duffel, shaking it slightly to jingle the pin.

"Blow it up?"

"Sure, why not? Get up to it, super-glue the grenade somewhere vital, use a string to pull the pin, and run like hell. House is condemned anyway, and nothing's immune to a grenade or two."

-

"I can't _believe_ these freakin' things are immune to grenades," Dean muttered, opening another door and scanning quickly with the flashlight. "Quanta-whatsis-lock stupid bastard freaking _angels_."

At least they'd figured out the immunity to grenades thing while it was still in the garden, and left a crater out on the tiled patio, rather than bringing down the house. Of course then the damned thing went into the house of too many rooms and no mirrors. "Who lived in this damned house, vampires?" Dean muttered.

Sam's voice echoed down the stairwell. "...mirror yet?"

"Bite me!" Dean shouted over his shoulder, "You 'n your goddamned weeping angel too!" Dean moved to the next room, shining the flashlight around. "Ha!" Something reflected in the dim recesses of the room.

"...wa-choo!" echoed down the stairwell.

"Gesundheit," muttered Dean, pulling some rotting canvas off the tall frame. Ha, it _was_ a mirror. A _huge_ mirror. "'S gonna be a bitch to get up the stairs." He stood back and considered the thing. Huge. Something was bugging him. Not the mirror, though he kinda didn't trust them after Blo-.

Outside the room, the stairs creaked, something big descending fast. Bigger than Sam.

Sneezes. Your eyes close when you-

Dean half-turned toward the sound, and didn't see his reflection in the mirror suddenly grow white stone wings, white hands like claws blurring down to grab his shoulders.

In a split-second, too fast to step aside or even think, he landed ass-first on sun-baked mud.

-

Sam opened his eyes and squinted into the sun. Felt like a grenade was going off behind his eyes so he closed them again. Something lumpy and prickly was underneath him. Cactus? Great.

Remembering the angel suddenly he opened his eyes wide and looked all around. No angel. No room, no house, no yard, no overgrown plantation, no state of Louisiana, nothing but mud-flats and cactus, as far as he could see. Also no Dean. Also just _great._ Sam gingerly rolled off the cluster of cactus and lay there for a minute waiting for the world to stop spinning.

The solid whump of a body hitting ground sounded close and to his left. Sam turned his head to see Dean fall over sideways, curling up and squirming in the dust.

"Dean!" Sam shouted, and tried to get to his feet and run towards his rolling, cursing brother, but found himself abruptly face-first on the ground. His legs hadn't moved. That was weird.

"Sam? Sam!" Dean shouted, doing some kind of bizarre torso twist-thing like a trained seal lunging for a particularly tasty fish, and fell over again. "What the hell?"

"Uh... I did that too. I went to take a step, and my foot didn't actually move, even though I thought it had, fell over." Sam's foot kicked out into the air. "Okay, there it goes now."

Dean's arms shot out in front of him. "Dude, what the-"

"I dunno, Dean, but maybe it'll pass. The weeping angel got you?"

"Yeah," Dean squinted around. "Where are we? Where's the hou- Dammit! Where's my car!" Dean tried fumbling to his feet and wound up executing what looked like an innovative break-dancing routine and landed on his face again. He spat out dust. "This? Sucks."

Sam tried moving his leg and noticed only a one second delay. "At least you didn't land on a cactus patch."

"Seriously?" Dean snickered. "That's like a total Wile E. Coyote maneuver, dude."

Sam found there was no time delay at all on his disdainful glare.

"So, what... are we dead?" said Dean, worming his way towards Sam. "Did the damn thing kill us, is this like purgatory or something?"

"I don't think so..." Sam wiggled his fingers, moving at the same time as he wanted them too. "Maybe Arizona?"

"Who knows. Might be the middle of Australia, but I don't think they've got cactuses there."

"It's _cacti_ , Dean," said Sam, reaching back to ease his phone from the only back pocket not full of ouch, and pull it slowly up to where he could see it.

Dean wriggled around and squinted at Sam. "Dude, we've been sent to the middle of a freakin' desert by an overgrown lawn ornament and you're correcting me about the plural form of cactus?"

Sam scowled and glared at the phone he'd spent the last eternity getting access to before easing it back into his pocket.

Dean watched what might have been an eagle or a buzzard circling overhead and twitched his limbs. "Lemmee guess, after all that, no signal?"

"Yeah." Sam stretched his arm and adventurously started picking out cactus spines he could reach. "So, you figure these angels don't kill people, maybe they just send them somewhere else?"

"Where though? Arizona? Australia?" Dean wriggled around until his hand caught up with his torso and he pushed himself into a sitting position. "None of the people that went missing ever showed up again Sam, and neither place is that hard to come back from. Did that book say anything else?"

"Uh," said Sam, wincing as he pulled out a particularly invasive cactus spine. "Naw, after the bit about the quantum lock thing it went off into... other stuff."

"Like what, maybe it'll help."

"I don't think so. Something about a robot dog."

Dean stared at Sam. "Robot dog."

"Um. Yeah."

"We went on a hunt based on info you found in a book with a robot dog in it?" Dean said flatly.

"Not only based on the book. There were the pictures from the newspaper. It had moved." Sam met his brother's unimpressed eyes. "The angel needed stopped, Dean! People were going missing!"

"Oh for- Now _we're_ missing, Sam! We don't know where we are or how we got here, we can't even walk straight right now, and I don't know about you, but feel like I've been stabbed in the brain! I don't need to hear about a book of lore with a robot dog in it!"

"It was right about the angel though," Sam said in his best tone of reasonableness, "and you know hunters as well as I do. They're all a bit nuts in some way. I guess this guy had a thing about... robot dogs."

Dean glared at a clump of mud for half a second before his hand came around and swatted it away. "Damn thing better not be drivin' my car, Sam. Solid stone, thing will screw up the suspension for sure. I don't even want to think about the seats."

Sam threw another cactus spine away and tried getting to his feet. Wobbly, but at least everything was moving when he told it to. He pulled out his cell phone again.

"It's weird, there's no signal at all, not even one bar. GPS isn't even picking up."

"It'd be just _perfect_ if we were smack in the middle of the old nuke-testing grounds," Dean said sourly.

"I don't think so, Dean."

"What do we gotta do to figure out where we are? Wait 'til nightfall and figure it out from the stars?"

"We can figure out what time zone we're in, I guess."

"Won't help much, but it'll be something." Dean got to his feet with a bit of advance planning, swayed and clung to Sam's shoulder like a sailor on high seas. "This totally sucks."

"Dean," gritted Sam, "Cactus."

"Ah, damn, sorry Sammy," Dean let go of Sam's shoulder and fell over. "Crap!"

"You should be about back to normal soon, if it's going the same way as mine did." Sam held out a hand to Dean. "Just watch the spines."

"Right," said Dean, begrudgingly accepting being hauled to his feet. "So, time zones." He looked at his wristwatch. "What time have you got, Sam?"

"I've got 4:38, and my watch is still running."

"Same here." Dean looked at the sun, close to directly overhead. "Twenty to five in the afternoon in Louisiana, and noonish here means..." Dean shook his head. "We'd be somewhere way off the coast of Cali in the Pacific, or maybe the Alaska panhandle. Whatever the angel did, we lost time from it."

"Felt instantaneous." Sam shifted foot to foot. "At least we know it can't be the Demon."

"Yep. He's out of the way for good." Dean looked at the surrounding expanse of mostly nothing. "We need to start by figuring out exactly where we are. Find some civilization."

"How? Picking a random direction and walking doesn't sound like the world's brightest idea and what else do we have to go on?"

Dean nodded his head to the east. "There's a bit of a rise over there, maybe we'll be able to see farther from on top, see if there's a road or town nearby. Who knows, maybe we're in Nevada, and we'll be able to see the Vegas Strip." He started walking. "Keep an ear out for planes. There might be a landing strip or airfield nearby with all this flat land."

Sam followed. "All I want to do is find a phone that works and call Bobby. That stone angel's still on the loose."

"Nope. I found a mirror." Dean grinned. "The bastard's stuck, now."

Sam frowned. "So you saw it in the mirror and it still got you?"

"No, I knew it was coming up behind me so I started to turn and-"

Sam looked sour. "You didn't see it."

Dean shrugged. "If I disappeared from in front of it, it got a good solid eyeshot of itself in the mirror. It ain't goin' nowhere."

"Assuming that it seeing itself counts."

Dean nodded, starting up the gentle slope of the small hill. "Well, yeah, assuming."

"And only until dark."

Dean stopped and Sam continued past him up the hill. "...crap. You are a ray of freaking sunshine, Sammy." Dean started walking again, faster. "We have to get back."

Sam reached the top of the hill and squinted around, pulling out his phone again. "Not sure where we are, but we're definitely not in the same time zone. or we've lost most of a day. Climate is totally different. We're going to need to find water and shelter if nothing else."

"How the hell can getting touched by an angel get us sent to a different time zone anyway? How does a solid stone statue do anything?" Dean side-stepped a patch of cactus and joined Sam on the top of the hill. He jerked his chin towards the book in Sam's hands. "What does your friend with the robot dog obsession say?"

"Hey, I just found it at Bobby's, it's not like I know the guy."

"Whatever, what does it say."

"That they move when no one's looking at them, and they make people disappear."

"So are they demons, ghosts, some kind of troll, what?"

"Doesn't say, really, and except for the reports of people going missing from that house for nearly two hundred years, nothing else." Sam frowned at his phone. "Still no signal."

"Great. Hey, does that look like a dust cloud to you?" Dean said, pointing at a smudge on the horizon. "Maybe someone on an ATV, or- hey! They do speed trials on mudflats, don't they? Racing cars!"

"The salt flats in Utah? Maybe..." Sam put away his phone again and shielded his eyes. "I don't see any kind of support crew though."

"Maybe we're at the wrong end of the track." Dean shaded his eyes. "Moving damn slow for speed trials... Could push it faster by hand."

"At least we'll be able to find out where we are, maybe hitch a ride..." Sam blinked at the shape coming out of the dust cloud. "Uhhh... Dean...?"

"...No freakin' way."

They both stood and stared as the dust cloud cleared, revealing a covered wagon pulled by oxen, rolling along the mudflats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding the Blink Monster effect. When I started this story, it wasn't really gone into in the Doctor Who episode "Blink", but the Doctor tells Billy Shipton not to get up fast afterward. I'm extrapolating that there's kind of a residual effect where there's a temporal fluctuation and the rate of neuron communication doesn't match up right away... meh. Basically, I wanted the boys wiggling around in the dust while conversing, okay?


	2. Chapter 2

Sam and Dean sank to a crouch and gaped as the covered wagon progressed along the flat land on the other side of the rise. A string of about ten cows followed on a rope behind it.

"Wagon," said Dean after a long pause.

"Uh hunh," agreed Sam, staring.

"Dude, it's an actual covered wagon. Like in a cowboy movie."

"Yeah... yeah, I can see that, Dean. I don't think they're shooting a movie though. No cameras."

"Hunh." They stood for a second and watched it get closer. One of the cows relieved itself. "Think they're, like, re-enactors? People re-enact the settlement of the old west, right?"

"Maybe. People re-enact the civil war. There was a bunch of people at Stanford that called themselves lords and ladies, dressed up in armor every weekend and whacked each other with swords."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Well, blunt swords."

In the no-longer-so-distant distance the wagon rocked side to side and a bucket of something foul-looking was pitched out the back and away from the string of cows following it.

"I don't think these are re-enactors, Dean."

"Ghosts?"

"I don't think cows have ghosts." Sam's nose wrinkled as the smell reached them. "...and if they did, I doubt they'd smell so... organic."

A man with a shaggy beard and a floppy hat held the reigns and kept an eye on the Winchesters. The wagon rocked again as a substantial woman in a yellow dress stepped over the bench to sit beside him.

"So..." said Dean, "Maybe they're Amish?"

"God, I hope so."

"Well," Dean stood up from crouching on the small hill and dusted his hands on his pants. "We're not gonna find out anything by watching them go by."

Sam looked up at Dean. "Wait, what?"

Dean started walking down the hill toward he wagon, raised his hand and shouted, "Hey! Hey you! In the wagon, stop!"

"Dude, what are you doing?" Sam rose quickly and followed his brother down the hill, grabbing at Dean's jacket.

"They're people Sam," said Dean, waving and smiling brightly, "They're the first living things we've seen that isn't a cactus or a buzzard, and we need to find out what's going on here." he looked back at Sam. "I mean they have to at least know where we are, right? Even if they're Am-"

A puff of white smoke erupted from the front of the wagon, matched by a spray of hard-baked mud to Dean's left as the sound of the shot rang across the plain.

Both boys threw themselves to the ground.

"Son of a bitch!

"The Amish don't have guns, Dean!"

"I know that, smartass!" Dean raised his hands from ground and shouted at the wagon. "Look! We aren't-"

Another boom and a spray erupted in front of Dean, dirt clumps raining down on both of them with a patter.

"Dammit!" shouted Dean, staying down. "We're not gonna hurt you! Stop shooting!"

"We just want directions!" Sam added from the ground.

The woman in the cart exchanged the man's spent rifle for a musket which the bearded man leveled at the Winchesters. The woman hurriedly pushed a rod with a rag on the end down the barrel of the rifle, glaring at Sam and Dean.

"You stay. No move." The man spoke with a heavy Scandinavian accent. "What is want?"

"Directions! Where's the nearest town?"

The man frowned and leaned over to mutter together with the woman, who kept loading the rifle and glaring. Two small blond heads peered out from the back of the cart, wide-eyed.

"Town?" Dean shouted again propping himself up on his elbows.

The man re-aimed the musket at them. "No move. Town," pointing back direction the wagon had come. "Day."

"A day?" Sam said incredulously.

"Horse, day. No horse, two day."

Dean swore.

"Can we get water? We have no water." Sam asked.

The man leaned over to speak with the woman again. An argument in a language neither Sam or Dean understood rapidly ensued.

"Two days walking across mudflats?" Dean muttered to Sam.

Sam shrugged, mouth set wryly. "Not much we can do about it, Dean."

 

A kidney-shaped leather bag landed on the packed mud a few yards from the wagon with a slosh.

The woman pointed the loaded rifle at Sam and Dean, looking very un-thrilled at leaving the water-skin behind. "No move!" said the man, picking up the reigns and snapping them across the backs of the oxen. The placid and possibly deaf animals which hadn't shifted at the gunshots plodded forward amiably.

The boys got to their feet. Sam picked up the water-skin. Dean watched the two blond kids in the back of the wagon duck below the edge of the wagon gate, fingers poking between the slats. The wagon rolled off into he distance, trailing cows.

"So," said Sam, weighing the water-skin in his hands, "That was a muzzle-loaded weapon."

"Yeah. A black powder rifle. And a musket."

"When exactly did they stop manufacturing those?"

"I dunno, eighteen hundreds, I think. Maybe early twentieth century? Caleb would have known."

Silence fell, except for distant mooing.

"Do you think we really-"

"Let's just start walking, Sam," interrupted Dean. "I don't know what to think right now."

"Right. Me either. And we've apparently got some time to think about it."

They headed down the hill to follow the tracks of the wagon back to town.

-

"...and that should be the end of the weeping angels," said the Doctor, breezing through the TARDIS door in 1969.

"Thank god," said Martha, swishing in behind him in a polka-dotted dress. "I swear I will never be rude to a shop girl again!"

"Things look different from the other side of the counter, do they?"

 

"Oh, like you'd know." Martha took her hairband off and shook her hair out. "So that's it for the angels then? Staring at each other for eternity?"

"Well, yeah," the Doctor said, trotting up the walkway to the console. "As long as no one decides they'd look nice in the garden and has them moved. Hm. Have to make certain that doesn't happen, and before night falls in Wester Drumlins and it gets too dark for them to see each other."

"So, not so done as all that then?"

"Oh, just a quick cab ride really." He poked buttons on the console and things bleeped. "Find some geologically stable planetoid with no inhabitants and one side always in daylight, pick them up, drop them off, they'll never not see each other again."

 

"Planetoids like that common?" Martha asked.

The Doctor grinned at her over the console. "Dime a dozen."

"Great! So we _are_ done then!" She spun, sending the pleated skirt of her dress swirling. "Just think we don't have to stay one more _day_ in that miserable little flat! We can leave it to the cockroaches! One bathroom shared between three floors, never any hot water. Never again!"

The Doctor pulled Sally Sparrow's DVD out of the slot on the console. "Here," he tossed it to Martha.

Martha read the label, and glanced back up at the Doctor. "'Notting Hill'? Not really my preference. I can't stand Julia Roberts."

"Doubtful the movie part of it works anymore after being used as an authorization disk, so you aren't at any risk of accidental exposure." Something blipped on a screen on the console and the Doctor tapped the monitor.

"Well, I'm for a long hot soak, and a swim. You coming?"

The screen blipped again and the Doctor frowned at it. "In a bit, just need to check on a few things."

"Right! I'll save you some hot water!" She laughed and disappeared into the depths of the TARDIS.

The Doctor put on his glasses and leaned forward, peering at the screen. "What are you then?"

-

Twenty-eight hours and a shivery, firewood-less night later, Dean kicked the road sign that read '10 miles to Angel Gulch'.

He shook his head and continued trudging along the wagon ruts. "Dude."

"I know, Dean."

"I freaking _hate_ angels."

Sam rolled his eyes. "I _know_ , alright? I'm not too fond of them right now either."

"Next time I see anything that looks anything like an angel, I'm kicking its freaking ass."

"Yes, Dean," Sam sighed.

"That goes for that little cupid freak too."

"So you've said. Over and over."

The walked in silence for a bit.

 

"Hey, Sam," Dean said, "Think that angel was maybe a Djinn of some kind? Is your deepest wish to live in the Old West?"

"Uh. No on both counts. The lore was pretty clear on this one, Dean." Sam pulled out the leather-bound book.

 

"Yeah, the lore that included robot dogs. Oh, and by the way," said Dean, annoyed, "When _exactly_ were you gonna show me the rest of that book, Sam?"

"Uh, what?"

"'Uh, what?' Dude," Dean snagged the book out of Sam's hands. "I took a look at the damn thing before you woke up this morning, Sleeping Beauty." He flipped to a page with a drawing of something that looked kind of like a phone booth. "Magic box?" He flipped again and held up another page. "Oh and these, what's he call them? 'Marching metal men'? These are totally Ronald's Mandroid pals from that magazine cover."

"The guy _was_ right about the angel, Dean."

"Yeah, well, doesn't mean he isn't a total whack job." Dean snapped the book shut.

"Okay, so it's not Dad's journal," Sam grabbed the book back and grimaced. "But it's the only thing we have here, Dean, and complaining about it won't make it any different."

"I just wish we'd got stuck back in the past with a more useful book is all."

"Whatever. Anyway, from what we've seen, and the fact that last night there were no planes or satellites or anything in the sky at all, it looks like maybe the weeping angels are sending people back in time..." Sam flipped through the book.

"...and back in the present they disappear completely?"

"Right, I mean, no trace of the other victims was ever found, except abandoned cars and bikes and stuff."

"My car..." Dean moaned.

"Dean, focus. There's a whole bunch of stuff about time and causality in this book too, Dean. I don't know how reliable it is, but it looks like the guy might've known about the time travel thing."

"Nice of him to _tell_ us the angels could do the time warp," Dean said sourly.

Sam shrugged and tucked the book back into his jacket pocket. "It's the most useful book we have, Dean. All things considered."

"Considering it's the _only_ book we have, yeah." Dean snorted. "I still can't believe you didn't bring your gun on a hunt."

"We were hunting a solid stone statue and we were going to be blowing it up with grenades! I left it in the Impala 'coz I figured it'd either be useless or overkill."

"No such thing as overkill, Sammy."

"Your gun's not going to do us much good anyway, it's anachronistic as hell-"

"It'll still kill stuff," Dean muttered, frowning.

"Um yeah," Sam said with a wry half-smirk, "and leave twenty-first century bullets in eighteenth or nineteenth century corpses. We can't shoot, drop or lose anything while we're here, Dean. We're a walking threat to the time-space continuum." He flipped through the book again. "Or something like that, anyway."

Dean scuffed his feet as the wagon tracks they were following went up a gentle rise. "What are we supposed to do, Sam? Walk around completely naked?"

"We can't leave anything we brought lying around anywhere, but we should definitely find some local equipment. Including clothes."

"What's wrong with our clothes?" Dean looked down at himself. "Jeans have been around forever and the rest isn't that bad."

Sam plucked at the zipper of his blue cotton-polyester blend jacket. "I'm just saying, we're obviously not from around here."

"This is messed up. We're stuck in the old west. We have," Dean counted their inventory of last night off on his fingers, "a book that's ninety percent crap, one gun that we can't even shoot things with, eighteen plain old non-silver bullets, some knives, some matches, some super-glue, a bit of holy water and a rosary, flashlights, a third of a flask of whiskey and clothes that make us look like freaks. Oh, and half a bag of M&M's left after 'dinner' last night, and a leather bag of muddy water that tastes like wendigo sweat."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, that's about it. Plus a wallet full of plastic and useless paper."

"And your money clip thing which might be silver, but is anacro-whatsis, so we can't even try and sell it."

"Maybe if we melt it down..." Sam shrugged. "I'm pretty sure it's just silver plate, anyway."

"We've got jack-all, Sam." Dean kicked a rock. "Not that that's a huge deal, we've made do with jack-all before, but this whole time travel crap is-"

"Yeah, I know."

-

Martha came back into the control room an hour later to find the Doctor studying multiple screens.

"What's the matter?" she said, toweling her hair dry. "Not up for a swim? I'd have waited but I've gone all pruney."

The Doctor scowled at the screens. "Something's not right."

"The angels?" Martha frowned.

"No, no," he waved a hand dismissively. "They're fine. I've relocated them on a nice, quiet, out-of-the-way stellar-locked planetoid, circling a brand new star that's not about to switch off. They won't be bothering anyone again. But this..." He tapped the screen. "This is wrong. Very wrongly wrong."

"Oh? What is it?"

"Another one."

"Oh, is that all? So, we pick him up and drop him on the planetoid with his chums then."

"I'm afraid it's not that simple..."

"Of course not."

"This one is in the United States-"

"Got separated from the tour, did it?"

"-in a different universe."

"What?" Martha came around the console to look at the screens. "What do you mean different universe?"

"Different universe, could be any number of degrees different from ours. Different physical laws even."

"Well it can't be too different if it's got a United States."

The Doctor glanced sideways at her. "You'd be surprised." He looked back down at the screen on the console. "That's not the point. The point is, the angel shouldn't be able to get there, and we shouldn't be able to see it where it is, but," he tapped the screen, "there it is."

Martha touched a pale blue dot on another screen. "So what's that then?"

"That is..." the Doctor frowned. "...impossible."

"What, again? So what else is new?" said Martha, awaiting for further explanation.

"Well, it's just there is no way for that to have gotten there unless..." the Doctor tapped his teeth with a fingernail. "Unless I put it there myself and I didn't. Or rather I haven't yet. I don't even have that anymore. We'll need to pick it up."

"Pick what up? What is it?"

"That's what's odd, it's nothing really, it's just my-"

The time rotor in the center of the console lit up and started moving up and down "Oh no!"

"What is it? Where are we going?"

"Nononono, oh no you don't!" He ran around the console, slapping switches and pulling levers. "The other universe, it's sucking us in! If we go now we'll never get back, and both universes could be destroyed!"

-

After walking in silence for a while, Sam and Dean stood looking down at the town of Angel Gulch in the shallow valley before them.

"Two streets and... what, ten, twenty buildings?" Sam said sourly. "Big town."

"C'mon Sammy." Dean slapped his brother's chest. "I see a bar. Beer's on me."

"Uh, they probably don't take Visa, Dean."

"I know that, smartass. They play poker, don't they?" Dean grinned.

Sam rolled his eyes and trailed after Dean.

People stared as they walked down the street, with odd little half-smiles for the most part, as though expecting the Winchesters to break into song or dance their way down the dusty road.

"I told you we don't look right, Dean," whispered Sam. "Walking into the bar dressed like this is nuts."

"Too many people around to try and hunt up some clothes off someone's laundry line." Dean looked around, smiling and nodding and trying not to feel like they were on parade. "Besides, these people are all pretty short. I don't see anyone who's clothes would fit me, let alone you."

Sam sighed and they entered the bar, dark after the afternoon light. Dean headed straight to the bartender with a smile, and Sam trailed along behind, eyeing bar patrons in case any of them decided to jump the freaky newcomers for something to do.

"Hi!" said Dean brightly, "We were-"

The bartender held up a hand. "You two are some of Smithy's people, ain't ya?" he said, looking them up and down.

"Uh, maybe," Dean looked over his shoulder at Sam who shrugged and nodded. "Yeah sure. Good old Smithy."

"Clothes like that and your accent, I can tell a mile off." The bartender grinned. "At least ya ain't talkin' crazy like some."

"Do you know where we could find him?" Sam asked, still keeping an eye on the customers in the bar, all of whom now seemed to be smirking.

The bartender pointed with a meaty hand toward the only intersection in town. "End of the road, then hang a left. Big sign over the door. Can't miss it."

"Okay then!" said Dean, "Thank you."

The bartender cleared his throat. "'Have a nice day!'" he said awkwardly, and grinned. "That's how your folk say 'bye, ain't it?"

A few of the customers snickered.

"Um, yeah," said Sam. "You have a nice day too..."

The bartender chuckled and half the customers burst out laughing, slapping their knees.

Sam and Dean left the bar quickly. Back out to the street, townsfolk who had accumulated around the front door while the Winchesters were inside scattered nonchalantly with amused backward glances.

"What was all that about?"

"I'm not sure," Sam said, "but I have an idea."

A group of kids ranging in age from about eleven to about six were 'hiding' behind the horse hitch outside of the general store across the street. Dean waved at them and they scattered, giggling and shrieking.

"C'mon Dean, let's go see this Smithy guy. That is, if you're done terrorizing the local kids?"

Dean made a rude noise and followed Sam down the street. "Figure this Smithy might be one of the angel's previous victims?"

"Could be." He looked over his shoulder to see two of the older kids peering out from behind a post on the porch of another building closer to them. He grinned. "Looks like we're being followed."

"Not surprised. I'm starting to think we might be the most interesting thing to happen in this town for quite a while." Dean waved at the kids again and they ran off laughing, feet thumping on the boards of the porch. "As long as no one's shooting at us, let 'em have their fun."

The Winchesters turned left at the corner of the only intersection in town, and caught sight of the very obvious sign hanging out into the street over the entrance to a blacksmith's forge a few buildings away.

It could have been made by a person who wasn't too concerned about capital letters. The dots and bars and curlicues could be a convenient and arguably decorative way to connect the words and show the blacksmith's skill... but the sign stopped Sam and Dean in their tracks, staring up at it.

"smithy@angel_gulch.us"

The Winchesters exchanged a look and headed inside.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean are stuck in the Old West and about to meet someone else in their situation, maybe. The Doctor and Martha and the TARDIS are being pulled into Sam and Dean's universe too soon, and that's a Very Bad Thing.

The TARDIS shook and spun, the floor rolling like the deck of a ship in a storm. The Doctor had one foot braced against a support beam, an elbow hooked around a railing and was slapping at buttons on the console. Martha, still trying to keep her feet under her, stumbled against the console opposite the Doctor and clung onto the edge, avoiding touching any controls that might possibly make things worse.

"Martha!" The Doctor called over the console. "That thing on your side that's flashing!"

"This?" said Martha, grabbing a lever with a flashing green bit at the end.

"No! No, the other one!"

Martha scanned the hundreds of controls on her section of the console. "This red button here?"

"Yes! When I say 'now', hit it hard!"

"Right!"

The Doctor muttered, punched something into a keypad, twisted a knob and shouted, "Now!"

Martha hit the flashing button. The time rotor juddered and hovered in mid-rise, vibrating with a quiet hum.

"Ha! Right!" said the Doctor, bouncing to his feet. "We have to land, find the book and get back in before the other universe overpowers the anchor."

"Which book? What anchor?"

The Doctor pushed a bank of switches, then frowned up at the ceiling for a second before looking concernedly across the console at Martha. "Ooo. Did you leave anything you were particularly attached to near the pool?"

"What? No, just that horrid polka-dot dress, why?"

"Good then. It's been jettisoned."

"The dress?" asked Martha with a slight air of glee.

"The pool."

"What?"

"Sorry, necessary sometimes, she can re-grow another pool," the Doctor patted the console, "...eventually. Right now it's more use to us as an anchor. It won't last long though so we'd better do this quickly."

"Do what quickly?"

"We need to make one stop in our universe first. Ideally two, but I think one jump will be all we can manage and this is the one that's most important. We need to get John Smith's journal."

"The 'Impossible Things' thing you wrote when you were human at that school in 1913? Farringham?" Martha frowned quizzically. "But why?"

"Because it's in the other universe as well, and unless _we_ take it there, there is no way it can be there. So we need to go get it so it can already be there."

"That's a paradox," Martha stated.

"Yeah, sort of, but that's the least of our worries." The Doctor turned a knob on the console. "One landing is all we're going to get before the anchor gives way. So, John Smith's teacher's flat at Farringham, three o'clock in the afternoon on Monday the tenth of Nove-"

"Are you joking?"

"What?" The Doctor glanced up at Martha's interruption.

"You can't land on Monday at three, you'll be there!"

"I will?"

"Yes, and Nurse Redfern! She'll be patching your head after that fall down the stairs. I might be there too for that matter. You want," Martha thought for a moment, "...about four and a half hours earlier."

"Alright," he bent to adjust the console, but looked back up immediately. "Hang on, why?"

"Because I remember John Smith's schedule. He'll be in a class from nine to eleven, and Jenny will have already done the linens by ten."

"I _was_ John Smith, Martha," the Doctor said in an affronted tone. "Do you think I don't remember my own class schedule?"

"Right then," Martha said, crossing her arms. "What class did you teach every Monday right before lunch?"

The Doctor squinched his face up. "Erm... Transcendental Astrophysics?"

Martha smirked. "Right, so I'll pick the landing point then, since I remember your schedule, my schedule and the schedule of the housekeeping staff?"

"I haven't forgotten, you know." The Doctor muttered, twisting a dial slightly.

"I know."

"Just other things on my mind. Saving the universe and things."

"Of course. Ten-thirty in the morning, Monday."

"Gently now," said the Doctor, easing a lever into place. The Time Rotor began to slide up and down its column, whining in protest.

-

Sam tucked the "Journal of Impossible Things" into an inside pocket of his jacket before he and Dean got to the entrance of the forge. The clangs and bangs of active blacksmithery emanated from the three-walled shed under the anachronistic "smithy@angel_gulch.us" sign.

The forge was dark after the bright sunlight of the street and Dean and Sam paused in the open entry way to let their eyes adjust. The shed smelled of charcoal smoke and hot metal; sawdust covered the dirt floor. In the red forge-fire-lit recesses of the building, a broad shadowy figure beat a glowing chunk of metal on an anvil.

"Hello?" called Sam, glancing at Dean.

The smith half-glanced over his shoulder and shouted, "Can I help you fellers?" before taking another few hits on the anvil.

"You're Smithy, right?" yelled Sam over the din. "The guy at the bar said to come here, and from the looks of your sign, I think he sent us to the right place."

The smith did a double-take, dropped his hammer, tossed the iron he was working on back into the forge fire, and charged towards Sam and Dean. Both Winchesters dropped back a step and Dean reached for his gun. The smith stopped short, hands up and palms out.

"Sorry, sorry, it's just... Please. You have to tell me, by all you hold holy..." The grizzled, greying smith looked intently back and forth between Sam and Dean. "...Who won the 2002 World Series?"

"Uh..." Sam glanced sideways at Dean, who shrugged. "Sorry, we don't really follow sports that much."

The smith deflated. "Dammit!"

"Sorry man," added Dean warily, hand still within easy reach of his automatic.

"I keep hoping someone that comes back will know." The man babbled. "The seventh game of the series was going to be the day after I-"

"-Uh, not to interrupt or anything," Sam interrupted, "but-"

"Right, right. Sorry. It's an obsession." The smith frowned. "So, welcome to the old west. You seem to be coping with it damn well so far."

"We're not about to go nuts, if that's what you mean," said Dean, dropping his hand from the automatic in his jacket.

A chorus of giggles and shushing sounded from not far outside the forge doorway. All three men in the forge shed turned and watched as a couple small faces peered around the doorway.

"Yours?" Sam asked, as Dean smirked at the kids.

"Just the one. Go on, giddoutta here! Scoot!" yelled Smithy, and the children scattered. The tallest of the bunch lingered sheepishly. "You know better, Lee. Stop egging them on."

"Yessir," the gangly blond boy grinned, glancing at the Winchesters with bright eyes.

"Now go fetch some water for these gentlemen. They walked in from the flats, by the look of them."

The boy scurried off without another word.

"You've been here since 2002?" asked Sam. "I, uh, mean that's when you were taken?"

"Yep. October twenty-seventh, 2002. Nearly four and a half years ago." He shrugged. "It's not that bad, once you find your feet."

"And Lee?" Dean asked, nodding towards the doorway. "I'm guessing he's not a local either? He come through with you?"

"Lee's been here three years. He's twelve now. I sort of adopted him." Smithy's face soured. "He went into the old plantation on a dare. It's a blessing in disguise, the place being so out of the way."

"Otherwise it'd be attracting a lot more kids," Dean added.

"Yeah."

"How'd he make it here across the mudflats?" asked Dean. "That's a hell of a hike for a kid alone."

"Wagon gave him a lift."

"Hunh. We got shot at," Sam muttered.

Smithy raised his eyebrows. "Well, you aren't nine years old and crying your eyes out scared, now are you?"

Dean smirked. "So, you get a lot of time travelers?" he stated bluntly.

Smithy looked between the two Winchesters. "You know, the few people that haven't gone plumb loco from not being able to understand what's happened to 'em, the first thing they ask is how they got here... but you fellers already know, don't you? About the angel?"

"The angel that sends you back through time if you aren't looking at it? Oh yeah." Dean folded his arms and scowled. "We know."

"Crazy, ain't it." The smith laughed and went to damp the forge fire. "I mean, who the hell even thinks of a statue moving on its own, right?"

"Right," said Sam, glancing at Dean.

"Absolutely," said Dean, nodding sincerely and glancing back at Sam.

"See," Smithy continued as he stirred the coals, "I saw the differences in the photos in the paper and figured it was hiding a trap door, drugs or guns or something, someone was moving it, offing people that got too close...."

"Yeah, um... not to be rude, but we've got a lot of questions," said Sam.

Dean nodded. "Starting with where the hell are we, what year is it and how do we get back?"

The broad man tensed, looking sidelong at Sam and Dean, then away. He took off his leather apron and laid it on the anvil. "Come on in, we need to talk."

The guy headed off into the house connected to the forge.

Dean snagged Sam's elbow as they trailed behind. "Hey, just 'coz this Smithy guy is from the same time as us doesn't mean we can trust him."

"Well, yeah," Sam said, "but he's a potential source of information. Maybe the only potential source of information."

"All I'm saying is he could be up to something."

"We have to get what we can from him, Dean, he's the closest thing to a local expert on time travel we're going to find right now."

Dean let Sam's arm go. "Dude, you have no idea how many times I've seen the 'Back to the Future' movies. _I'm_ the closest thing to an expert on time travel we got."

Sam shook his head and followed the smith into the house.

-

Steven was lost, again. This school was like a rabbit warren; take the wrong turn or the wrong staircase and who knew where you ended up. Like now. Steven looked up at the names on the doors. He'd get in real trouble if he was found wandering the hallways of the teacher's flats. At least he suspected he would; having only been here for two months, it seemed he got in trouble for almost everything.

As he scurried down the hall, he heard a very odd noise. It sounded, he thought, like an elephant dying. Great wheezing noises, starting quietly and growing louder. He knew the sound of an elephant dying from the six months he'd spent in India with his family when his father'd been posted there by his company. The place was over-ridden with elephants.

Steven followed the sound to the door of one of the teacher's flats. What an elephant was doing dying inside - he read the nameplate - Professor John Smith's flat, Steven couldn't venture a guess. The great gasping, wheezes ended with a decidedly un-elephant-like bonk.

It was probably best, Steven thought as he lurked outside the door, to leave whatever happened inside teacher's flats while they were teaching classes as part of the great unsolvable mysteries of life, like geometry, Latin conjugations and girls. But it was a curious thing, and Steven was a curious boy. He edged closer.

Mr. Smith didn't teach any of Steven's classes, but he'd heard the man was a new, and quite young member of the faculty at Farringham School. Perhaps the teacher had a contraband wireless hidden in his room.

Steven loved the wireless. His father was an absolute wireless lunatic. Anytime there was something being aired, his father would tune in the wireless, regardless of what it was. It drove mother mad, all the fiddly bits that made up a wireless receiver strewn about the house, the aerial spread through her garden, but she did enjoy the music when it was available.

Perhaps this was a play. Sometimes they would air plays from London, although Steven hadn't heard of any plays that had dying elephants in them. Inside the room he heard a door open, quick footsteps and a sound underneath it, a kind of low discordant hum, building, like some part of the receiver was about to blow. A capacitor or some other arcane bit his father would know about. Steven crouched down beside the door to listen.

Rustling papers. "It's not here, Doctor!" A woman's voice called. Quite clearly, Steven marveled. Professor Smith must have built a very good set, aside from the buzz in the background.

"Have you checked?" a man shouted distantly.

"Yes, I've checked! It's not here!" More books and paper-shifting noises. "I would have sworn you picked it up from here later today to give it to Nurse Redfern."

Steven found it odd and amusing that the play, which seemed to have a medical theme, had a Nurse Redfern in it, the same name as the school Matron. He also suspected that the last line the woman had spoken might have given his Professor of English fits about tense agreements.

"I'd come out to look, but it'd bring the Family of Blood down on us sooner in the past."

Steven scratched his head and thought it was just as well his English Professor was a dry old stick and very unlikely to even know what a wireless was.

"Yeah, no," said the woman. "Stay right where you are."

"It's in there somewhere. Keep looking!"

"Did you keep it here in the desk?" Sounds of drawers being opened. "Or did you keep it by the bed? You mentioned writing dreams in it."

"Hurry, Martha! The anchor's not going to hold much longer!"

An anchor? Steven's eyes lit up. A _nautical_ medical play. That would be exciting to see. He imagined they'd have a big steamer ship on the back wall of the stage, like the one he and his family had gone to India on. Or a sailing ship, maybe sailing through a storm to bring help to a colony stricken with a dire illness. He hoped Professor Smith's radio would hold out a good while longer. The buzz was so bad now he thought he could feel it in the boards of the floor. But that was impossible of course.

"If there weren't all these papers everywhere- Must you spread a newspaper through the entire room to read it, Doctor?"

"What?" called the distant man.

"Ooo bloody-" Something that sounded like a stack of books sliding to the floor. "There it is!"

"Hurry! It's giving way!" The buzz really was horrible now, kind of thrumming almost.

"But I have to clean up the-"

"Leave it! Run!"

Then another elephant died, the wheezing blending with the buzzing and also with a high wail that built and then trailed away at the end. Steven thought it was far too dramatic for an elephant's death. The teacher's flat beyond the door fell silent.

 _The capacitor or whatever it was must have blown,_ Steven thought. Discouraged, he stayed crouching in the hallway trying to figure out how the rest of the play would go, with a ship of Doctors and Nurses sailing through a storm to save a colony from a horrible plague. He wasn't sure how the dying elephants fit in, but supposed it would make sense if he'd heard the rest of the play.

-

The room was plain, undecorated except for some curtains that might have been burlap sacks in a former life. The furniture was rough and inexpertly hand-made, as were the few cupboards. One corner was dominated by a black wood-fired cookstove.

"Pull up a stump," Smithy said, gesturing to a raw-planked table near the stove.

Sam pulled over a chair, but Dean lingered by the burlap-curtained window.

"Nice view," he said, nodding out the side window at a pair of young women who had come from somewhere to lounge around the front of the saloon in the late afternoon sun.

Sam craned his neck to see out the window, then dropped into the chair with a long-suffering huff.

"One thing I get the feeling I should point out to the pair of you," the smith said, looking straight at Dean, who was smiling and waving, "Normally not something that gets brought up right away, but... Uh... as long as you're in the past, no sex."

"What!?" Dean's head whipped around.

Smithy scowled. "Neither of you can risk damaging the future by fathering a child."

Sam nodded. "Actually, Dean... It makes sense."

"What," Dean repeated flatly, swiveling to stare at Sam.

"If you get some girl pregnant before you were born the universe would probably explode."

"Hehe. Well..." Dean leered lasciviously.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean..."

"Okay, okay, fine." Dean frowned. "What about in the last Back to the Future Movie, Doc Brown hooked up with that teacher chick. They had two kids."

"Are we really gonna wager the fate of the universe on your knowledge of pop culture?"

Dean shot Sam a look that eloquently expressed, _"This would be different from usual in what way?"_

Sam pressed his lips together sourly and raised an eyebrow.

"Besides, like I said," Dean smirked and pointed to himself, "expert."

"I thought about that," said Smithy. "The teacher was supposed to die, so when he saved her and took her out of the time stream, they could-" He waved his hands vaguely. "Procreate without destroying the universe."

"Hey, yeah! Quick, Sam!" Dean said urgently, "Can you think of any hot chicks that bought it in the old west?"

"...Dean..."

"What? Come on!" Dean held his hands out to the sides. "I'm joking!" He lowered his hands and glanced back at the saloon girls before turning his back on the window. "Besides, it's not like we're planning to stick around in the past," said Dean, pulling over one of the other chairs and straddling it.

The blacksmith tensed. "Do you think if-" he began.

The door clattered open and the blond boy, Lee, came in carrying a pail of water and a loaf of bread. He set them beside the cookstove and tucked himself into a corner, grinning at Sam and Dean.

The smith looked from the Winchesters to the boy and back. "Lee..."

"Aw, come on! Can't I stay?" Lee pleaded. "These guys aren't even crazy."

Dean smirked. "There's something we don't often hear," he murmured to Sam.

"No, Lee," the smith said sternly.

"But it's been months since-"

"Maybe later." Smithy's tone was final. "You have chores."

Lee sighed, "Yessir," and dragged himself out of the kitchen.

Smithy watched the boy go, watched the door shut.

"It's alright," Sam said after the door closed. "If he wanted to stay, I mean he's from the twenty-first century too, it's not like-"

"It's not good for him." Smithy said, interrupting Sam. "Reminding him of that. He doesn't need reminded."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look as the smith got tin cups down from a shelf.

"This is kind of new for me." Smithy said, dipping tin cups into the bucket of water and setting them on the table in front of the Winchesters. "I'm used to people that come through being off their nut, so I have a chance to work up to the big question."

"Which would be 'How do we get back?'" said Sam, tone grimly expectant of the answer.

"Yeah. That one," Smithy said, tightly. "There is no going back. No way, no how. You're stuck here, for the rest of your lives."


End file.
